Religion

[blueflower999]

Wow guys, excellent rebuttal. Bravo!

[Pianist Da Sootopolis]

Dropping this here and moving on.

"Nobody designed my brain for thinking"
Actually, natural selection did. Those who are able to think things through rationally tend to survive the longest.
"How can I trust my own judgement to be true?" Because if it weren't our entire species would've been dead a long time ago.
"It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping the way it splashes will give you the way to London"
Not really, actually. If you wanted to use the milk jug analogy, it would be more like "you drop one drop of milk, and if it doesn't work you scrap the paper, and you keep adding on to what you already have that works until you get London". Trying to make a false analogy like that work isn't entirely possible but that's about as close as you can get.

I'm sorry, does the presence of a guiding force disprove the presence of a guiding force?

Correct me if I'm wrong, Brawler, but I think what Brawler was saying is that the belief of God guiding the universe for us to live is a personal one, and not particularly relevant to C.S. Lewis' statement.

[Dudeman]

"Nobody designed my brain for thinking"
Actually, natural selection did. Those who are able to think things through rationally tend to survive the longest.
"How can I trust my own judgement to be true?" Because if it weren't our entire species would've been dead a long time ago.

Doesn't that imply that there was a point where nothing thought things through rationally? And it must have been a very long period, as humans are the only creatures capable of thinking cognitively. You've never seen a dog question its existence, have you? So then why didn't everything die out long, long ago before anything could think rationally?

Now, if you replace "rational thought" with survival instincts, that's a different story.

[Pianist Da Sootopolis]

Survival instincts are surely rational thought, aren't they?
Depends on how you define rational thought. I was thinking more along the lines of a=b, b=c, therefore a=c, rather than "how did everything get here?".
It may well have started purely with survival instincts and progressed more from there, hence why humans with our bigger brains have figured out so much about the world.

[Dudeman]

So why did humans become the only animals to reach that point? What about animals with brains far bigger than ours? Why aren't they capable of sentience, as we define the term?

[Pianist Da Sootopolis]

What about animals with brains far bigger than ours?

What animals? I actually don't know off the top of my head.

[blueflower999]

The Great Blue Whale has an enormous brain iirc.

[Dudeman]

Whales and elephants have brains far more massive than humans. Unless you meant in terms of ratio to body size. In which case, the pygmy shrew's brain is as proportional in size to its body as a human's, or very nearly.

[Pianist Da Sootopolis]

My guess is that because humans are majorly social animals, and their intelligence directly plays into getting a mate, whereas with an elephant or whale it probably isn't as important.

[Dudeman]

Um, elephants are actually incredibly social animals.

[Jub3r7]

"How can I trust my own judgement to be true?"

I guess this isn't inextricably tied to religion, but you can't. Many people base most of their judgments on experiences and memories, both of which are a lot more flimsy than people realize. So when something weird happens in reality, and their experience or memory can't explain it - they call it supernatural, or some kind of glitch in the matrix.

on an unrelated note, it's really easy to personify natural selection, but apparently there's some sort of fallacy in doing it that I'm not informed enough about to explain.

So why did humans become the only animals to reach that point? What about animals with brains far bigger than ours? Why aren't they capable of sentience, as we define the term?

How do you define sentience?

[Dudeman]

Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively. The key term here is "subjective," having independent feelings and opinions. Animals are driven by instinct, not feelings. They don't question the morals of going after their next meal. They just do it.

[Dude]

They don't question the morals of going after their next meal. They just do it.

most humans don't either, haha.

[Dudeman]

There is the human conscience to consider. Some people are just very good at suppressing it.

[Dude]

Are you saying I should feel bad about eating a cheeseburger? Because I don't lol.